Rather than viewing grief solely as sorrow, the essay reframes it as a generative force—one that opens space for transformation.

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by Miranda Goosby

Grief isn’t always sad.

Sometimes, grief is a portal. It cracks something open. It clears space.

If we allow ourselves to surrender to the breaking, grief can become more than sorrow—it can reveal what’s been buried. It can offer honesty, possibility, and even joy.

After the 2024 election, when yet another administration hostile to Black life and liberation took power, many of us—especially Black women—chose ourselves. Again. We chose one another. Not out of isolation, but out of devotion. We turned inward and toward each other, honoring our lineages even in the midst of national collapse.

We did not wait to be saved. We moved. We organized and nurtured. We checked in on our elders and our comrades. We created new rituals and remembered old ones. We laughed, not simply to keep from crying, but to reclaim the sound of freedom. We allowed joy to be a practice and a promise.

As 2025 unfolded, bringing more fires—literal and metaphorical—we remained grounded. Even amid destruction, we refused to abandon ourselves. We kept our boots on the ground, but we also returned to what sustains us. We reached for the practices we had set aside to survive: rest, ritual, creation, pleasure. We returned to them because we understood they are not luxuries. They are lifelines.

For me, music has been one of those lifelines. It has helped anchor my spirit and reconnect me to the sacred. Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Beyoncé, BigXthaPlug, Teedra Moses, and Tank and the Bangas have reminded us of our depth, our brilliance, our anger, and our right to feel everything. Their songs create room for our grief and our dreaming. Whether heard in stadiums, headphones, or car rides to work, their voices have become a form of communion. They offer us the language and rhythm of survival.

Music has reminded us that we are still here—still loving, still creating, still breathing—even as the world continues to threaten our existence.

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Because the harm hasn’t stopped. It continues daily, often with devastating consistency. Families are being deported and separated. Planes fall from the sky. Centuries-old legal protections are dismantled in a matter of days. These events are not random. They are the natural outcome of a system built on domination and erasure.

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Yet even in the face of this violence, we continue to endure. And more than that, we transform. We are not simply surviving—we are transmuting grief into resistance, pain into power, and despair into creativity. This has always been our way. We make a way where there is none. We imagine freedom even when all signs point to its absence.

I often think about the generations coming after us. I wonder what they will inherit. I hope they find spaces where they can live freely and fully. And if those spaces do not yet exist, I pray they remember their right to create them. I want them to know that Black women have always been portals. That our joy is not a distraction from liberation—it is central to it. Our ability to imagine and create outside the confines of white supremacy is both political and spiritual.

By choosing ourselves, we are choosing a new way to resist. It is not always loud or visible. Sometimes it looks like care, or community, or boundaries. Sometimes it looks like taking a breath. But it is always revolutionary. Because at the core of our work is a belief: those closest to harm carry the blueprint for transformation. That truth shapes my politics, my practice, and my hope.

We are not new to this moment. Our people have faced collapse before. The systems may evolve, but our resilience and resistance remain rooted in ancestral memory. We are carrying forward what has always been ours.

Wherever you find yourself this summer—in motion or stillness, in sorrow or in celebration—know that you are not alone. We are surrounded by the ones who came before us. And with them, anything is possible.

 

Authors

  • The Black Youth Project is a platform that highlights the voices and ideas of Black millennials. Through knowledge, voice, and action, we work to empower and uplift the lived experiences of young Black Americans today.

  • Miranda Goosby (she/her) is a writer, educator, and creative committed to documenting and amplifying Black and Brown voices across borders. Rooted in Chicago by way of Maryland’s DMV, she works as a Program Manager at Northwestern University’s Global Learning Office, where she facilitates transformative learning experiences through a Black intersectional feminist lens.

    Her work centers storytelling as a tool for liberation—spanning issues from reproductive justice to ethical global engagement. Whether advising study abroad programs in Scandinavia or building transnational networks from Mexico City to Hanoi, Miranda cultivates spaces that are inclusive, youth-centered, and grounded in care. Her heart beats for community, narrative, and radical possibility.